PARA/ INQUIRY Postmodern Religion and Culture Victor E ... - IMIC

Deservedly confin’d into this rock,Who hadst deserv’d more than a prison. 10Miranda, the supposed innocent, chastises Caliban for his essential vile nature in such a wayas to suggest the availability of a coherent moral code predicated upon the implicit “goodnatures” of all humans. She describes how she attempted to impart this nature to Calibanthrough the transformation of “gabble” into ordered language; her mission civilitrice isapparent in her efforts to bring Caliban into humanity through this order of language. Herreversal of Caliban’s complaint is not altogether irreversible, in the sense that both Calibanand Prospero step outside the order of nature in their own unique ways. Miranda’s difficulty isin preventing her venomous attack on Caliban (depicting him as the monster who is outsideof nature) from spilling over onto her father, who also defies the order of language throughhis incantations. Miranda’s order is sustained by what lies outside of it, in this case the “vilerace” to which Caliban belongs. The integrity of human nature is sustained by that which, ineffect, lies outside of it: Caliban.Caliban’s presence, his role as monster, and his enslavement on the island provide theopportunities for moral reversibility. This reversibility, however, is not ending. Morality isdismantled, not by a higher morality, but by the lack of a higher morality, to which Calibanappeals for justice. Prospero’s moral ascent to the sacred is a descent or a lateral move intoan alternate structure – in this case, magic. For Prospero to become more civilized he mustbecome more brutal. The impossibility of ascent to a higher plane, the sacred, results in afrustration and brutality which presses upon the Other to define, via the negative, the humancenter. Like Caliban on the island, the Other of Western discourse must become for the sameever more vile in order to sustain the idea of order, righteousness, good natures, andcommunity through civilization.If one then returns to Brink’s Adamastor as a contemporary manifestation of this civilizingmission, the residue of Shakespeare’s Caliban is apparent. Shakespeare’s Caliban is closelyconnected to the Adamastor by certain discursive strands. Both represent the repressedpassions in civilization which exceed civilization. The sexuality of Caliban and T’Kama areheld in suspension around an ambiguous civilized sexuality. In this sense, theparahuman–parasacred coupling is both a site of oppression and a site of liberation. Thecivilized can be sexual only as it draws from the savage the necessary energies of sexualexpression. Both Caliban and T’Kama are within the discourse of civilization, even while theyare unaware of it. T’Kama, in particular, is more uncivilized than Caliban in so far as he iscompletely alien to the explorers. A mark of the civilized is language, and Caliban clearly hadbeen instructed in its use by the good Miranda:The problem was that it was impossible to talk to the visitors. I had the distinct impression thatthey knew nothing resembling a language. They could utter sounds, but these were quitemeaningless, like the chattering of birds. So perhaps they were a kind of bird after all. However,we tried to communicate with them through gestures and after a while they began to respondin the same way. 11Brink reverses the context for deciding upon what is civilized. T’Kama, unlike Caliban,becomes the bearer of discourse, and it is the visitors who are non-communicative and,26